Carbonation and environmental impact of concrete

Abstract

The development of European standards intended to provide a framework for assessing the sustainability of construction works was by far the most important step towards the evaluation and comparison of their environmental, economic and social performance. From an environmental perspective, the use of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) allows an informed choice of the more sustainable construction materials. The development of an EPD calls for specific guidelines that enable different manufacturers to evaluate equally the environmental impacts of their products during the different stages of their life cycle, i.e., the Product Category Rules (PCR). In the last years, the CEN/TC104/SC1/TG20, together with CEN/TC229/WG5, has made relevant progress on establishing PCR for concrete and precast concrete products leading to the publication of the European standard EN 16757 in June 2017, while a CEN Technical Report on CO2 uptake in concrete is about to be concluded. This paper, after presenting the general view of the normative approach for all the construction materials, makes a comprehensive analysis of the above documents, with particular focus on the relevance of carbonation on the environmental impact of concrete and concrete products